


holding to the ground

by merriell



Series: Koenig [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: Henrik Kotov had lived so long with a ghost living in his head, living with half-truths in his lips. After losing his partner in life, he went to see someone who he knew was meant to be with, to tell him the truth -- before he went and put an end into the curse that had befallen him and the thousands other lives he could have been born in.





	holding to the ground

Riva’s death was a chunk ripped from half of his life.

Being in her funeral was something surreal, like seeing something from behind his crystals. He had insisted for her hair to be braided, for flowers to be tangled between the red locks, a smile still taut in her lips. Like the first time he’d discovered her breathless on their bed, he kept expecting her to awaken.

Rivaille Koenig wasn’t a sleeping beauty—she was far from it. She snored in her sleep, sometimes drooling on his arm, sometimes punching him on the jaw inside her dreams. Sometimes, she’d pretend to be asleep just to joke around with him, and he would stroke her cheek and kiss her on the lips.

Perhaps that was the reason why he kept expecting her to wake, even though it’s been a day after the last time she opened her eyes. The night was old when she died in her sleep; the clocks ticking past midnight as he realized that human body wasn’t supposed to be this cold (his mind had reached to his sister’s hands).

He spent the whole night cradling her body before he called the paramedics late morning.

“Why didn’t you call us sooner?” a girl with thick-rimmed glasses asked suspiciously after they started carrying her body to the car headed to the morgue, her gaze squinting at him.

He smiled, painfully. “I kept thinking it was a joke. She does this thing, you know. She’d jokingly tackle me even though I know she was awake.”

To be honest, he just didn’t know exactly what to do.

He’d watched many people die across his lifetimes—one of it was the person he loved and one of it was half of his soul. When Sienna died, Henrietta carried her body with tear-streaked cheeks, sharp words stabbing him on his stomach, and even as she cursed him and dragged him across worlds, he only had to stay silent and stare at her. When Henrietta died, blood pouring from her stomach and staining Riva’s hands until it was as red as her hair, he could only sit there as her body disappeared into thin air.

“How are we supposed to go home?” He remembered Riva asking as she stood up from where she was crouched at. The body might have disappeared but she was kissed by blood. “Are we trapped here?” Her voice never wavered, although he knew the heavy weight on her shoulder accompany her alongside of a set of new voices she heard.

Henrik Kotov wish he didn’t know how to go back. His eyes felt tired, like his entire body had just been hit thousand times. Cockroaches still swam on his feet. It wasn’t real, but knowing it didn’t make him feel better. But he didn’t spend more than twenty years answering to a foreign voice in his head not to know what happens next.

“Are you okay?” He asked instead.

The air still reeked of Henrietta’s last song, like guilt raining down on them both. Riva closed her eyes. None of them had ever seen the other cry. It was unclear if that was a bad thing or a good thing.

Rivaille Koenig never cried as Kavinsky’s kids tortured her after Henrietta left her alone in Kavinskaya. The girl was a creature of revenge and wrath; Hank seen her eyes full of murder whenever they came around, but never tears. She might be capable of doing those things, but stabbing her childhood friend in the heart was another realm entirely.

“She would have devoured you,” she said simply. “I do what I do: protecting you.”

He knew that: she would’ve done anything as long it meant protecting him, even antagonizing her only friends, even throwing away her feelings for a lifetime full of happiness. Her happiness. Hank wished he loved her in a way that she wanted him, the kind of love that send butterflies in his stomach. But like her, Hank had his own share of sacrifices: he gave up everything for Henrietta. His name, his life, the one he loved.

“Let’s go home,” he said softly. He held her hand and opened the Reap back to their world. He ignored the sliver of coldness seeping in his hands.

It felt like a lifetime ago since his sister blamed him from Sienna’s death. Hank felt no regret of not saying what he wanted to say, because it was not what was needed.

_I loved her too, you know._

_I tried to save her, I failed._

_I would die in her place, but it was what needed to happen, and it did._

Remembering it, Hank felt a dizzy spell. He put his hand on the casket as his eyes slowly stabilized. He only lifted his eyes when he sniffed a scent of lilies beside him. The tattoos were things he saw first, then the cold eyes, of not anger, but something else entirely.

“Hello,” he greeted his cousin with a small smile. “Is it time already?”

Skye Sewick frowned at the sight of her dead bestfriend instead of answering it. In other worlds where things like him didn’t exist, she would’ve been hers. But Skye didn’t know that—it was an untold secret on the tip of his tongue, because most of all, Henrik Kotov was born and lived an egoist. If there was a measure of guilt in the world, the most he would feel was against her. Thanks to him, three people Skye held dear was gone.

They were close, once. A long of time ago, he wrote poetry like a sad drunkard drinking ale. Everytime he felt a hint of sadness, he poured himself to the pages, cursive filling every inches until white was stained dark, and she had loved it so much she pushed him to publish it. He naturally said no. He wasn’t supposed to exist, he told her, and she had translated it as the way he was busted out from a Russian facility where he was a lab rat. What he meant was something else.

But again, she didn’t know that.

“No, I just wanted to see her face,” she answered lightly after a few moments. Her gaze traveled to the his gloved hands, but if there was a question on her thought, she didn’t say it. Instead she leaned over and fixed the way Riva’s braid was settled at. “The service is starting soon, though. You might want to recheck your eulogy.”

Pulling away his hand from the casket, he turned to her so his whole body was facing her. “I didn’t prepare one. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure what to say… I haven’t attended a funeral before.”

Her face wasn’t schooled to a polite expression; Skye made her distaste against him clear, and he knew she meant every inch of it. “You were supposed to. She would have loved hear any of your writing. I’m sure there’s a few about her. You lived with her, after all.”

To be truthful, Hank had never written anything about Riva. Their relationship was a private one, one he didn’t bother sharing the details with anyone else, but most importantly, she was happy, and she made him laugh. Others knew of his sharp words and Riva’s rudeness towards his mental condition. But none knew the big picture, because he didn’t allow anything to slip out: Riva and he was in mutual understanding of that. He didn’t feel like starting when the other couldn’t give a yes.

“I’m really not in the place to give an eulogy, if you could understand. I’d like to just be sitting.”

“Fine,” Skye sharply dismissed him. She turned away and stalked away from the scene, leaving him alone with the casket.

He stared at his girlfriend for ten years for the last time he was allowing himself to. “You know,” he muttered. “One last chance for you to wake up and tell me it’s April’s Fool.”

Like what he was expecting, he was only met with silence. She was dead and it was late July; no one was justifying heartbreak-filled sins on July. He knew that. But watching her without any heartbeats make him think that he was seeing it from another world. Maybe _his_ Riva was still alive. Maybe she was still laughing and he was only half-asleep watching a far away world from his world.

When Sienna died, he didn’t allow himself to grieve: she wasn’t his to grieve. He remembered her offer, and thought that the pang of blood in his throat wasn’t regret, wasn’t anything. He tried to save her, he failed, and that was the truth.

When Henrietta died, he didn’t allow himself to grieve: it was his entire existence that was at fault. He tried to save her in ways he understood: _please end this for me, you can take away everything, I’m sorry_ , even though it wasn’t what she wanted. His sister was never the one to hurt anyone. When Riva stabbed her, it was too late for her to start.

Riva being dead, instead of trying to prevent it—he tried to make her happy in ways that make her laughter softly carry into the night, tried to make her happy in a way that she smiled even in her sleep.

He’d done everything.

He wished it was enough.

He left her a kiss on her cheek as the service started.

 

*

 

“You’re leaving,” Skye muttered, her voice raising for a split second.

“Yes, yes I am.”

They were sitting on her living room, facing each other. Bohemian carpets kissed their feet while black couches carried their body tirelessly. A long time ago, there would be five people in the house—now they were left with only the two of them. Hank played with the loose string of the couch, his hands ungloved this time. The black gloves he used to don was put on Skye’s wooden desk between them.

She stared at the silver streaks decorating his hands. He let her, didn’t bother scolding her to avert her gaze. When someone touch his hand, they would feel something inhumanely cold under their fingers, alike of the dark veins decorating his sister’s hands. His hands were far from his sister’s the first time they’ve met each other after fourteen years, but when he was finished with this entire business, he knew it would be identical.

Hell, the only reason Henrietta was alive for that long of time while using her powers were Sergei’s potions and Summer’s operation. By the time he’s finished, he’d be very lucky to be alive.

“As I’m understanding you,” Skye started, a script of her new play pressed on her lap, “you acquired Henrie’s power shortly after her death, and you’ve been hiding it from me since. I would ask whether Riva had known this, but even though I don’t think I’ve known you any better since the first time you walked here, I can guess that she was involved in this entire business from the first place.”

“That would be close to the truth,” he answered lightly. It was Riva’s idea to hide it from Skye. She couldn’t bother losing another bestfriend after losing two in such a short time—and he would lose Skye if she had found out that Riva had killed Henrietta. She didn’t have to beg; he didn’t like the idea of telling Skye at the first place.

Keeping Skye in the dark was the best decision of anything. She didn’t understand the world like they do. Her eyes were a film from the 20s, her values of the world black and white.

 _Please, I don’t want to lose her too_ —

He shook his head to eject the image of Riva, washing blood away from her hands, almost frantically, begging him not to tell her.

“And why did you not tell me?”

Stroking his fingers, his gaze dropped down to the skin before answering, “I’m afraid that you would speculate that I’ve orchestrated this entire business, even killing my sister, just to acquire this power.”

It wasn’t a lie. And even though he didn’t orchestrated it, it was something he knew would happen and he had let it happen.

“The fact that you didn’t tell me was even more suspicious than if you had told me back then, but I doubt you, in any slightest way, cared about it now. It’s too late to have a talk about it.” She closed her eyes for a moment tiredly. Skye Sewick was a legendary theatre/musical actor, her name’s the role model of many aspiring actors. It’s been years since Les Misérables, since she took the red coat of Enjolras—she was no longer young now, but moments like this made her look like she was. She opened her eyes and looked straight at him in the eyes: “I still don’t know what happened with Henrietta in detail, you know.”

They’ve never told her. Another sin for him against Skye, he thought.

“I wasn’t quite sure either. It happened so fast. She was devastated about Sienna. We couldn’t manage to save her.”

Half-truths; it was all he could give Skye, even then. It was simpler than saying his sister found out that he’d known of all the things about them that were to happen, and she dragged him across worlds and almost devoured him because her ignorance about this fact had made her lose someone that for her, was her entire universe. That what Henrietta didn’t figure out until the end was Sienna was his entire universe, too, and he tried to save her and failed.

“Where are you even planning to go?” Skye stood up and turned to the kitchen. He stood up and followed her, fidgeting even in only one moment he was left alone in the living room. She put a kettle into boiling and fiddled with her shelves for tea.

Hank leaned against the kitchen’s island. “Anywhere the Reap take me. I want to see the worlds. Find out what’s out there. You know, I was imprisoned for fourteen years. I can’t be stuck in a world where there’s nothing I can do.”

“Why didn’t you do it when Riva was still alive?”

A pause.

“I wanted to make her the happiest here.”

“And was she?”

“The happiest?”

“Yes,” she turned and leaned against the cupboard where the stove was ingrained in. “Was she the happiest when she was still alive?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that yes, she was?”

Her eyes became sharper for a moment before it passed through him. “Perhaps I will, Henrik,” she answered with a grim tone. “Perhaps I will not. You haven’t been telling me shit since I first know your name. I don’t know if you’re lying or not.”

“I am telling truths,” Hank smiled. It was a smile reserved to his sister and him, to all the other reflections in the world that exists under their soul. His smile was identical to Henrietta, and he knew Skye recognised it from the twitch of her eye before she turned back to the stove.

“There are things you could do in this world. Publish your poetry book. Don’t let it rot in your journals. You could take care of Riva’s grave. Fight for Gifted’s rights. Solve any murders. Help anyone with your sister’s power.”

“Perhaps.”

“She would’ve wanted you to _stay_ ,” Skye muttered softly against the steam of the kettle. Her invisible breath mingled against the faint white smoke, gentle to the oxygen around her—but it stabbed him like a quiet knife slipping between his ribs, painful enough to make all the pain he felt fresh.

If he had cried back then, it would have hurt less, he knew. But he saw more than one hundred deaths in his crystals before he stopped crying entirely. You could pour only that much tears in your life until your heart dried out. His was still alive, even then, with all the deaths of people he loved, and strangely there were words in the world that could rip it to shreds and then put it back on like a Frankenstein monster in the invisible parts of his body. But still his entire being refused to cry.

 _Crying does not solve anything_ , a voice in his head said in a foreign language that he knew the meaning to, _what you can do is stop wasting time and break the curse before it was too late_.

“She would have wanted me to do the things I wanted to.”

 _No more souls lost_.

“I know her much better than you, Skye. I lived with her. You don’t.”

 _Before it’s too late for anyone else, Hank_.

“Just because you feel pain over her death it doesn’t mean her will is yours to decide.”

Some words struck to the bone. Skye’s shoulder stiffened, but she didn’t turn back to him. The kettle rang an alarm, reminding them that their life didn’t exist in a vacuum. Her knuckles were bone white when she gripped it from the stove, turned it off and poured boiling water to a mug. She dropped tea bags inside it, her fingers trembling slightly.

He didn’t need to be that harsh. But he had to invent another way to deal with the gnawing gash on his chest, and if it wasn’t by crying, he had to do it by lashing against someone. It just happened to be Skye. Another sin against her. His head hurt.

He should feel guilty.

That time he felt nothing but sick enjoyment of hurting someone to ease his own pain.

Henrik Kotov born and lived an egoist.

It took Skye a few minutes of dropping blocks of sugar inside the tea before she finally turned, her eyes sparkling with tears. She walked to the island and slid his tea to him, her fierce scowl growling against his gaze. He had hurt her deeply when she cared and it was at that moment that Hank realized that their relationship could never be the same as it used to be.

“Henrik,” she started, her voice filled with poison. “Your sister’s ability is as convenient of a teleporting machine. It’s not like a bloody plane that you can just missed on. If you were to go away from this world, using your sister’s power _for your own sake_ , I would expect you to at least visit Riva’s grave every year on the day she died. It would be the least you can do for her, even if she wanted you to do whatever the fuck you want.”

He stared at her.

“It would be the _least_ respect you can fucking give to her grave and your sister’s memory,” she added. “Because she cared about Riva. And I’m not sure you do.”

A smile bloomed on his face, slow and practiced. This was the nature of their relationship then, he realized. How there was nothing saving the softness of Skye’s gaze when they were talking about literature he read on the facility. How she treaded carefully, with concern, on the topic.

“I promise I will,” he replied. His voice was a contrast against the loud silence in the entire house. The mug filled with tea was raised to his lips, and he took a long sip, not caring at how the liquid burnt the tip of his tongue with its hotness. It smelled like jasmine, and for a few moments it erased the overbearing smell of lilies that was identic to Skye’s presence, that at that time felt so sickening that he felt dizzy.

He put down the half-drank tea on the counter again. Noticing that he had nothing else to say, he turned around to pick up his bag. It was only of Skye’s soft voice—the poison devoid from it, for a moment—that he stopped in his tracks.

“Give me all your poetry books, the one you wrote,” she said. It wasn’t a request; the commandeering tone meant it was a demand. “I know you’re not going to carry it around. Let me keep it.”

She always loved it, after all. The last good treasures he had of her. She wrote annotations to the cover once. Riva had told them how boring it was. Skye and him, they had liked it, and Skye had said, once, how amazing was it that his linguistic skill differed by a sky high to Henrietta.

“I’ll drop it here when I come back and pick up my things,” he told her. There wasn’t a lot of things he was planning to bring; the things that resided on his (their) residence all reeked of Riva: mini Matryoshkas they bought from the market fair that looked like the cast of Star Trek, cute mugs they got for $1 each from the dollar store, pinboards filled with the places they were in, vinyls of rock bands and anything from EDM and electronic genre, among other things. His belonging was clothes, journals filled with poetry, expensive pens that he bought with his own money.

The entire house was Riva’s. It was after her death he realized how eerie his presence in the house was: like a ghost living in it without a trace.

He felt strangely like one then, hovering around the empty house with no one blasting pop music from the radio. The pots that stained of burnt garlic felt like an old relic of a far away time. A week after Riva died, he was still sleeping with the same blanket that smelled like the crook of her neck.

He didn’t love her the way she wanted him to be. He didn’t love her the way he wanted him to be, either, not in a way that could make her absence felt just like losing ticket stubs he saved for a journal he never made.

Perhaps it didn’t matter.

His mind was restless as he opened the Reap heading to the place he was living in. He tried not to look at the painting of the sea that lead to his sister’s beach. It wasn’t his to visit. It wasn’t his for his cursed eyes to look at.

 

*

 

After dropping his journals inside Skye’s mailbox—with a small note: _See you. Hope you love it still_ —he left his world, closing the Reap he created behind him with a slight frown in his lips as the pain stabbed him on his neck.

It was years since he first time used his sister’s power, the ability to travel between the thin veils of the worlds, still he wasn’t used to the way pain welcomed him as his hands moved. It wasn’t a sharp kind of pain, but rather a dull one, like knocking your head onto a wall (don’t ask him how he was so familiar with such pain, he wouldn’t have answered). Accompanied by his own burden—visions that swam his sight with views that disgust even him—he felt tired everytime he used the power, a dark void of lethargy sucking his bone marrow dry.

Hank shook the feelings away. He had no time to justify resting for himself.

The scent of a dreary winter greeted him as he looked around. He was inside a small alley between a bright red and a yellow house, towering tall with its brick walls reaching the sky. A group of children ran freely laughing at the end of the alley, playing tag in the streets of the colorful neighbourhood. Reykjavik was always beautiful, he knew, but he’d never been to Iceland before, only saw it from behind his crystals. It was slightly colder than his hometown, which made him pull his scarf tighter around his neck.

Walking out from the alley, the group of children he’d seen was at the end of the street already, their nose red against the cold air. Hank watched them quietly from where he was standing, eyes curiously peering at the way their eyes closed as they laugh.

Growing up as a sickly child, easy to ramble over visions that no one could see, when he was younger, he had no friends beside his sister. People called him a freak behind his back, because Henrietta would throw them with a rock if they’d dare to do it in front, and so he’d never had a group of friends to play tag before. It was a simple pleasure he wasn’t privy to… and there were a lot he forbid himself from. Remembering Henrietta’s gentle, childish anger lumped into some kind of sadness in his throat.

It was five minutes before he finally turned away. He fixed the way his glasses hung on his nose before starting to walk on the unfamiliar road. He wouldn’t get lost, he knew; his cursed eyes prevent him from otherwise. Still, being surrounded in the streets of unfamiliar world overwhelmed him with a sense of loneliness. Even with people walking, smiling politely at him as he passed—he replied with also a small smile—he still felt like he was out of this world, like he was watching from behind a television.

Sergei Azarov’s house were miles away, but Hank wasn’t in the mood to drop unannounced at once in front of the guy’s doorstep. No, that would be too rude.

Besides, he was enjoying his walk. After being blessed with silver hands, his body, although hurting from dull aches of Reaping, became somewhat stronger than before. He enjoyed long walks even more than before. Perhaps he just liked surrounded with people he didn’t know. It was easier when you didn’t know the histories of people you choose to surround yourself with, he thought.

After an hour of walking, he arrived at the edge of the city, he waited at the end of the street for a full five minutes before he heard the wheering of an engine that dulled behind him before stopping at his tail.

“Mister!”

He turned to see a group of family peering from behind the windows of a Jeep. He smiled at them, nodding his head as he fixed the strap of his backpack behind him.

“Where are you going?” The one who called after him, a woman with matted hair and kind eyes, smiled from behind the steering wheel.

“Góðafoss,” he answered softly.

“By feet? Are you a hiker?”

“No. I’ve never hiked before, actually.”

“Don’t be crazy!” Beside the woman who was driving was a Japanese woman, a few years older than the woman before. She had sharp eyes that pierced into him. “Look at you, you look like you haven’t eaten. Alone, too, like that. You won’t survive.”

“Dear,” the one driving shushed her lover with a low chuckle. “Look, what’s your name?”

“Henrik Kotov.”

“Would you like to hitch with us, Henrik? We are headed that way to Laugar, I’m sure we can drop you there.”

A five year old girl shrieked from the backseat. “Are we going to see a waterfall, mother?!”

“No, we are going straight to Grandfather’s house after dropping this man,” the one behind the steering wheel told her daughter. “But I’m sure we can take pictures before we go, Gilda.”

“Yay!”

Slowly, that brought a smile to Hank’s face—a true one, something he didn’t seem to do these days. “Thank you very much. I would be eternally grateful.”

He climbed up the backseat and sat beside Gilda and her sibling, Nina, politely keeping to himself during the ride until Nina asked him to help him with a game she was playing with.

During the five hours trip, he answered questions as best as he could and asked as many for the family; he discovered that the one driving, Katerina and Ayame had been married for five years; Nina was Ayame’s daughter from her last marriage, and Gilda, the younger one, was an adopted daughter. They were heading to Katerina’s old residence in Laugar, a half an hour drive from Góðafoss.

When they asked him questions, Hank tried to answer in way he knew best: in half-truths. He told them he was from Russia, even though he’d been living in New York for the last ten years, with his girlfriend who died because of a heart disease—“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Ayame said with a slight frown; Katerina looked at him sympathetically from the mirror—and he intended to meet an old friend he lost contact with in the waterfall.

“What are your friend doing in the waterfall?”

“Oh, his late husband really loved the waterfall, it was one of his favorites. He really liked reading there, said it was really peaceful.” Hank replied softly, his thoughts somewhere else. “He spent a lot of time there now, because it was their private place.”

“I see,” Katerina closed the topic immediately.

Hank tried not to think of intruding another memory.

When they arrived, Hank said thank you to both of them again, even bowing slightly as he helped the family took pictures with the waterfall as the background. He said goodbye to Nina and Gilda, giving them candies he saved in his backpack. Gilda grinned at him and Nina smiled at him shyly before they climbed up to their mother’s cars. Ayame had kissed him on the cheek and wished him luck. As their car drove away, he waved at them before turning to the waterfall.

It was beautiful. Looking at it behind his crystal was amazing enough; feeling the cold mist of water hitting his face was something else entirely.

Hank pocketed his hands and started walking to the spot he knew Sergei’s house was in. It was late morning; there was one particular reason why he didn’t want to come so early in the morning, where the day had just started, but he didn’t feel like putting it into words.

His dark hair was tousled by wind as he walked. Half of his face was covered by the red scarf. It was cold. He started missing Katerina’s car then. But there was no turning back. At the spot he knew where the door was—invisible coats covering the entire house until it blend into view—he knocked at the door.

A full minute passed before it was opened. He looked down at the man he was an old friend with (Sergei was more than a few inches shorter) and smiled behind his scarf.

“Henry—“ the voice stopped, correcting himself. “Hank?”

Oh, he, in this age, looked like Henry from ten years ago, he knew. They didn’t look that alike side by side, but in memory, the resemblance were uncanny, especially with the scarf obstructing half of his face, only showing his bright green eyes. Hank pulled the scarf down and nodded his head at Sergei, the smile (the same smile he and Henrietta and Henry and Hirose and all their other selves wear) was clear now.

“Hello,” he greeted.

Sergei stepped aside to let him in. “Come in,” he told him, and Hank complied obediently. The inside of the house was warm, a sanctuary for his cold skin. “What are you doing here?”

The scarf was folded neatly into a pile of red cloth before he answered, his voice soft. “Well, for starters,” his bright green eyes glanced aside, meeting Sergei in the eyes—you know, he didn’t quite realize that in memory, he looked so much like Sienna, with the same gray eyes fixed on him, “I’m here to have a conversation.”

“A conversation about what?”

“I’m here to tell you the truth about the curse a chyerti cast upon us the first time we were born inside a world.”


End file.
